Indiana State University Newsroom

Indianapolis conference to focus on health care reform

Health care industry representatives, scholars and analysts will discuss health care reform during an Oct. 21 conference at the Columbia Club in downtown Indianapolis.

Wayne DeVeydt, executive vice president and chief financial officer of WellPoint, Inc., and several panels will discuss "The Affordable Care Act: Challenges to Access, Affordability and Availability."

Other participants include Scott Harrington, a health care systems and insurance and risk management professor in the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School; William Hoagland, vice president for public policy and government affairs at CIGNA; and Daniel F. Evans, Jr., president and CEO of Indiana University Health, among others. They will discuss how the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will affect employers, insurers, state governments and health care providers. Networks Financial Institute (NFI) in the Scott College of Business at Indiana State University is sponsoring the conference.

"Since this law reforms the financing of health care, I would think a lot of people would be interested in this, especially given the very prominent industry leaders who are on the panels," said Terrie Troxel, executive director of NFI.

The conference will run from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and is free to attend, though registration is required. For more information, or to register, visit NFI's website at www.isunetworks.org.

The audience at the event will learn about the various elements of the health care reform, along with the law's benefits, challenges and the implications for the future, Troxel said.

The law is currently being implemented in phases. Several elements, such as young adults' ability to stay on their parents' insurance until they are 26 and a prohibition against insurance companies rejecting people with preexisting conditions, are already in place; yet other parts of the legislation, including the costs incurred for the law's benefits, go into effect over the next several years, Troxel said.

Shortly after health care reform was signed into law in early 2010, more than a dozen attorneys general of states across the country, including Indiana's Greg Zoeller, filed lawsuits challenging the reform's constitutionality. Yet despite the ongoing legal challenges, health insurance plans are making the necessary changes that the law requires, Troxel said.

"It is a change, and it is the law of the land until, and if, the Supreme Court decides otherwise, so employers and health insurance plans certainly are changing to comply with the law," he added. "Public policy defines the environment in which they work, and they have to comply with it."

Indiana is home to some of the largest health care insurers in the U.S., along with major entities in other areas of the medical and health services field, Troxel explained, which makes the conference in Indianapolis even more pertinent.

"We think that a broad audience will be interested in this event," he said. "A substantial number of people, organizations and companies are, and will be, affected by this law."